The applicant has significant experience in the food preparation arena. Patents for processing chicken portions include U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,080,631 and 5,078,644. However, in processing food particularly chicken breast, it was observed by the applicant that a normal chicken breast as taken from a chicken is usually cut into only six chicken breast cutlets with the remainder of the chicken breast being utilized in other lower profit margin chicken products. Processors would normally covet 20 to 24 oz. chicken breasts, which would then be cut into six 2.5 oz. chicken breasts portions for a total usage of 15 of the 20 to 24 ounces. Thereby a maximum utilization of this type meat product would be around 62.5 to 75% at best for this high profit margin product. The remainder of the breast meat has been utilized in the past for lower profit margin products.
Often the breasts are provided at 30 to 40 ounces. This translates into a highest percentage of yield of this type product to be around 50%, and could be as low as 37.5%. With this type product, the breast is usually cut symmetrically down the middle. A lower portion of the breast is then cut into a first breast portion and then a portion above that is cut into a second breast portion. The thicker of those two portions would be cut in half to provide the respective six chicken portions shaped like breasts as are often bought in the grocery store as de-boned chicken breasts or are provided as chicken cutlets for chicken sandwiches. The remainder of the chicken breast is then often processed into nuggets or other lower profit margin chicken products.
In the fish industry, fishermen have been preparing fillets at sea and/or at fish processing units and then freezing fish filets as blocks. A box is normally filled and frozen containing the filets forming a block. Blocks are cut into slabs which are then cut into fish sticks such as is shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,643,952 and 3,294,012. Furthermore, frozen fish can also be processed into desired shapes as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,474,823.
However, in spite of this technology, there has still not been a good way to deal with efficiently utilizing poultry breast meat. Furthermore, although efforts have been made to produce desired shapes of food such as is shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,203,838 and 6,521,280, the applicant believes that improvements to existing food processing equipment can be provided over prior art designs.